Obstacles to Ethnic Outreach in Urban Settings

July 27, 2009 – 10:16 am

part 1: urban ministry focus

In chapter 7 of Cities: Missions’ New Frontier, Roger Greenway proposes different obstacles to ethnic outreach in urban settings. Below is a summary of four of the obstacles he lists.

Ambivalence toward new immigrants

Americans take pride in being a “land of opportunity” where people from all backgrounds can come and pursue their dreams. We look with misty eyes upon the Statue of Liberty and feel our hearts well within us when we hear its call, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Yet we don’t want these “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to come to our neighborhoods.

Rather than welcoming immigrants, Americans tend to disdain them. They fear the immigrants will take their jobs. They wonder why these people still speak their native tongue instead of speaking plain English (as if learning English was a simple task). Even Christians, instead of welcoming the opportunity to learn of new cultures and reach these people with the gospel, usually ignore and avoid new immigrants. Believers instead must recognize that these immigrants provide an excellent opportunity for gospel ministry.

“White flight” from the cities/Anti-urban bias

Once other ethnicities begin to move into a neighborhood of the city, white people move out of the cities into suburban areas. Since the majority of white Americans have moved away from these areas, they are now left with very few contacts with other ethnicities. They have no understanding of how other people live and work, which means cities have become a foreign area in which white Americans no longer know how to act.

Though in the past this exodus has been a predominantly white phenomenon, today it is common for middle-class people of all ethnicities to move to the suburbs, where the level of living is deemed better. In general, cities are seen as dangerous places where drugs, crime, and corruption reign.

Thus, cities are places that families should avoid in order to protect themselves. However, if Christians want to reach the nations, they must be willing to return to the cities and live among the people in order to build redemptive relationships.

Traditional image of “missions”

In the minds of many, gospel ministry to the unreached does not resemble reaching people in their own cities, or even reaching people in foreign cities. The typical “missionary” is someone who goes to exotic places (jungles, wilderness, mountain villages, etc.), eats strange foods, and learns new languages.

Because of this faulty view of missions among many churches, the urban missionary can at times feel as though his supporting churches cannot understand the pressures he faces. The loneliness, constant noise, and transitory nature of the cities provide unique challenges to the urban missionary that are not a part of the “traditional” missionary’s struggles.

For those who desire to minister in North American cities, part of the challenge is helping other churches to realize the opportunities and needs that cities offer in regard to missions. Too often Christians are willing to pay money to send a missionary half-way around the world to preach the gospel to an unreached people but are unwilling to go to the city next to them to share the gospel with that same people group.

The Apostle Paul did not wear a pith helmet and travel up and down rivers on canoes ministering to half-naked savages. Rather, he went to cities to plant churches that would eventually spread to rural areas. Churches must be given a more biblical model of missions and be willing to be involved with the mission field at their doorstep.

Cultural inflexibility of most churches

Churches are beginning to recognize the need to legitimately contextualize ministry in foreign settings. They realize that there are elements of traditional worship and organization in North American churches that are culturally determined rather than biblically absolute.

However, churches have been slow to consider that the culture of white suburbs is different from the culture of other ethnicities within the cities. Simply because people have immigrated to America does not mean they have abandoned their own cultures.

Therefore, churches planted within cities may also need to adapt certain elements of their worship and service to the cultures of the city while still remaining faithful to the message of the Gospel.

- Ben Edwards, our resident urban guy

c.f. this post with his recent A Little Bit of Country: What About Rural Ministry? post